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Delaware purges rare species information for lack of permission slips

Delmarva Fox Squirrels are bigger and more silvery that gray squirrels that are common in Delaware. This one was photographed with a wildlife camera at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. The Delmarva fox squirrel is on Delaware’s endangered species list.(Photo: DNREC)

Delaware’s rare plants and animals may seem even more elusive – on paper at least – now that nearly half of the state’s existing records on those species have been expunged.

That data purge was prompted by years of landowner allegations that state officials and others trespassed on private property without permission to gather that information about when and where rare plants and animals are found.

“It will certainly mess up the actual statistical reality,” said Lorraine Fleming, a Delaware environmentalist and author. “It has taken decades to interpret and assemble the data, and this is just erasing all of that.”

The repercussions of losing nearly half of decades' worth of documentation on threatened or endangered species in the First State could impact conservation and restoration projects as well as scientific research and potentially deny the public information on the actual presence of those species, legislators and environmentalists say.

Sen. Stephanie Hansen, D-Middletown, established the Statewide Ecological Extinction Task Force with an eye on introducing legislation during the 2018 legislative session to stop native plant and animal species from extinction in Delaware.(Photo: DOUG CURRAN/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS)

“Our understanding of what is threatened or endangered is based on what we know of those populations existing in our state,” said Sen. Stephanie Hansen, D-Middletown, who learned of the data purge at a legislative committee hearing last week. “We would be operating with blinders on.”

Of the 4,337 individual records on rare species that have been collected over the past few decades, state officials were unable to find written permission to access private property for 1,886 records, said David Saveikis, director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Division of Fish & Wildlife.

Those have now been removed from the state’s database on rare species, while both digital and hard copies of those records were turned over to the Attorney General’s Office. The data “still exists for various reasons under lock and key” but is completely inaccessible to the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the public, Saveikis said.

“There was a concern about how the data was collected,” he said. “We respect private property rights and did our best to rectify the concern.”

The data purge, completed last May, was revealed during a legislative committee hearing last week on Senate Bill 133, which proposes placing a two-year moratorium on DNREC’s ability to share decades' worth of environmental data that had been collected on private property.

The moratorium, as written, would prohibit environmental officials from sharing information on everything from floodplains and wetlands to rare species to how ecosystems adapt to climate change – regardless of whether officials had permission to access those properties.

Saveikis said the rare species records were expunged before that legislation was introduced last summer. Questions remain whether those records will ever be restored.

“We don’t know if or when we’ll be able to reassess those data to do followup to see if we can gain clarification,” Saveikis said. “There is the potential we may never get access to that data again.”

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, said the loss of information illustrates why his bill, which aims to ensure no information is collected without landowners’ permission, is necessary. He said it will be considered for a vote in the Senate next month.

Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes(Photo: Senate Republican Caucus)

“This was an organic piece of legislation that came from a phone call from constituents right here in the Cape Region who had had, for the last 30 years, DNREC administrators and employees coming on their property without permission and obtaining data,” he said. “I think the majority [of private property owners] would be more than willing if simply asked. The fact that that wasn’t taking place shows a degree of arrogance.”

One of those constituents includes David Carey, who testified at the hearing that DNREC employees have trespassed on his family’s Milton-area land for 25 years. Carey’s concerns and others partially prompted a revision to the state Land Preservation Act two years ago, nixing the requirement to catalog and publish maps that identified specific properties – many privately owned – that could be suitable for permanent protection through the state’s Open Space Program.

Losing access to natural resources data could have serious implications on conservation work, funding and scientific research, said Brenna Goggin, director of advocacy at the Delaware Nature Society. She said many federal grants require large amounts of data, and losing that much information on vulnerable species could make it difficult to access those funding streams.

“From a research perspective, it could be devastating,” she said. “With things like climate change and increasing development pressure and potential weakening of federal regulations, are we losing a critical tool in the toolbox to protect species at risk?”

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Sen. Stephanie Hansen was so alarmed at the decrease of the native habitat and species, she convened the "Statewide Ecological Extinction Task Force" to study the extinction of local plant and animal species and make recommendations on how to reverse the trend.

Returning purged information to the state’s database on rare plants and animals would require a lengthy review and would require that the department seek written permission from current property owners who own private land where the information was collected – a task some say could be nearly impossible.

“In some instances, the property may now be in the hands of an owner two or three generations down the line, or the prior owner is deceased and the estate has been settled,” Hansen said. “There are all sorts of reasons why they may be unable to go back in time to get these affirmative written positions.”

If the purged data is not recovered, Hansen said, it will be more difficult for the state to make “environmentally sound decisions going forward” and that could potentially hurt the value of private properties more than it helps.

“Some species may actually now show up as much more threatened or endangered than they really are,” she said. “Taking that information could devalue, perhaps, other people’s property because it will be seen as having endangered species instead of species that are actually more plentiful. That can make your property worth less because you can’t develop, or it takes portions of the property out of play.”

Saveikis said losing access to 43 percent of the state’s data on rare species – a dataset that was not fully comprehensive or complete with 100 percent of the records, he said – could misdirect his agency’s efforts to restore or purchase lands. If an animal seems extremely rare on paper, but is more plentiful in reality, land acquisition or restoration efforts could be prioritized in the wrong places.

“In this day and age of our intellectual and moral obligations to have as much information about the natural world, about the built world, about everything around us, this doesn’t make any sense at all,” Fleming said. “It’s totally, totally backward.”